What I Love About God

By: Sean Reisch

A few weeks ago Mark challenged us to reflect on what we love about God. The idea was for each one of us to dwell on what we love most about His character. When we discover and dwell on that we will want to serve Him more deeply. There are so many places that our minds could go with that because there are so many aspects of God to love. I want to share with you one of my favorites.

God cares for the destitute; God loves the afflicted.

This is one of the most impressive aspects of God’s character to me. God cares for the lonely, the oppressed, the mistreated, and the forsaken. He loves those whom the world would ignore. You see this throughout the Old Testament in a number of ways.

First, you see this in the provisions God makes for the destitute in the Mosaic law. He repeatedly makes it clear that He wants His people to take care of the afflicted (Deuteronomy 10:18-19; 14:28-29; 15:11; 24:17-22; 27:19). This wasn’t a side issue to God. God expected the Israelites to care for the poor, orphaned, widowed, and foreigners in their land. These are the people that had no one to advocate for them, so God wanted His people to take special care of them.

Secondly, in the wisdom literature God makes it evident that He will be the Redeemer for those that don’t have one (Psalm 9:9; 35:10; 68:5-6; 69:33; 113:7-9; 140:12; 146:9; 147:6; Proverbs 22:22-23; 23:10-11). He will take up the cause of those who are afflicted in this life. He seems to take it personally when people take advantage of the downtrodden. 

Lastly, God takes the Israelites to task in the prophets for NOT caring for the afflicted (Amos 2:6-7; 8:4-6; Jeremiah 5:28-29; 7:5-6; 22:3; Zechariah 7:9-11). We often think about God punishing the Israelites for their idolatry, which He did, but He also punished them for their injustice and oppression of the needy. He condemned them for neglecting the outcasts.

Each of those things show us that there is a special place in the heart of God for those who are broken by life, and for those who have no one in this life to care for them. What I love about this is that it presents us with the tenderness of God. We see His compassion come to the forefront. Perhaps I find this most astonishing and impressive in light of His power. 

God is everlasting (Psalm 90:2), He is the Creator of all (Isaiah 40:26, 28), and He is reigning as King (Psalm 93:1; 95:3).  Yet our God, whose greatness is incomparable, reaches down to care for those in the lowest positions of life. I think I’m struck by this because we don’t typically operate this way, at least not naturally. We tend to reach up to those of greater power and authority in order to increase our own standing, but God does the exact opposite. 

I draw great comfort, encouragement, and exhortation from this truth about God. It puts a smile on my face and makes me want to burst out in praise! It comforts me to know that even when I was spiritually destitute and orphaned God cared for me (Romans 5:6-8). It encourages me with a message to share with those who are hurting in life about this great God who cares for them especially. And it exhorts me to make sure I am prioritizing what God prioritizes, caring for the needy (James 1:27).

That’s what I love about God. What do you love most about Him?

Showing Brotherly Affection

By Tom Rose

It has always been that way.  You dress up in your best to go to church.  Even if you have personal problems, are depressed or simply undone with life, you go to church and look normal, say everything is okay, and try to hide the pain that won’t go away.  Church is not the place to bare your soul and share your messy problems, because people will talk and people will judge – all the while saying they feel “so sorry” and “would do anything to help you.”   Why is it that we think of church as a place to go after we have cleaned up our act, not before?  “Church!” said the prostitute, “Why would I ever go there?  I was already feeling terrible about myself.  They’d just make me feel worse.”

But the scriptures show a different picture.  Think of Esau after Jacob tricked him out of his birthright and the anger he expressed as recorded in Gen 27:41 “So Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him, and Esau said in his heart, ‘The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then I will kill my brother Jacob.’”  Yet, with the passage of time and a few chapters later we read, “But Esau ran to meet him (Jacob), and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept” (Gen 33:4).  Almost the same scene of emotional healing is portrayed by Christ in His famous parable of a father greeting his prodigal son. “And he arose and came to his father.  But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him” Lk 15:20.  If you noticed, both passages contain an embrace or a hug – the most beautiful form of communication that allows the other person to know beyond a doubt that they matter.

Perhaps the apostle Paul knew better than anyone who has ever lived what it meant to be forgiven by God and reconciled to Him.  Knocked flat on the ground on the way to Damascus (Acts 9:1-9), he never recovered from the impact of God’s undeserved grace extended to him.  Indeed, Paul knew what could happen if we believe we have earned God’s love.  In dark times, if perhaps we badly fail God, or if for no good reason we simply fall short on keeping The Faith, we could fear that God might stop loving us when He discovered the real truth about us.  However, Paul took pains to explain how God has made peace with human beings (see Titus 3:1-8) by giving up His own Son, rather than to give up on humanity – helping mankind know beyond any doubt that God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are!

Just as God has challenged us to know the unsearchable riches of Christ (see Eph. 3:16-21), He also asks us to show that same devotion for our brethren. “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love” (Rom. 12:10).  Two examples of Paul’s deep interpersonal relations with his brethren are found in Acts.  Read Acts 20:36-38 and notice the verbal and non-verbal emotional interactions as Paul and the Ephesian elders part from each other for the final time.  A second illustration is found in Acts 28:13-15 near the end of Paul’s perilous journey to Rome.  When Paul reaches Puteoli, Italy, brethren invite Paul and his companions to stay seven days.  However, other Christians in Rome get word of Paul’s arrival (a person whom they had heard about, but had never met), so they walk forty-three miles to the Market of Appius to greet him.  Others, possibly getting a later start, meet Paul ten miles closer to Rome at the Three Inns.  Deeply moved by their visible demonstration of love, Paul “thanked God and took courage.” In these greetings (and many others) were found open displays of affection probably including hugs and kisses.

Let’s suppose your car has a problem and is not working properly.  Would you take it to a dealer’s showroom or a service department?  Perhaps that is a question we need to ask about our meeting houses – do they resemble more a “showroom” or a “service department?”  And why is that?  One writer offers this observation:

“Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God’s unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people. …Although we believe in God’s Word, the good news of the Gospel has not penetrated to the level of our emotions.”¹

I believe the following statements, when pondered soberly, may help us look at the big picture – as God sees you and me along with all humanity.  “Jesus gave up worship for a womb, majesty for a manger, splendor for a stable, and heaven for a hamlet.  He went from being wrapped in glory to being wrapped in swaddling cloth.  He left breathtaking for breath taking and the infinite became the infant.  It was incredible to know that the baby Mary delivered had actually come to deliver her and everyone else.  He was born so we could be born again.  He lived on earth so we could live in heaven.”²

Sometimes we need to hear more than reassuring words of comfort.  Sometimes we need a hug – a hug where someone wraps their arms around you so tight and assures that everything will be alright.  That is in fact what Susan and Anna Warner did.  Born into privilege on Long Island, NY, their mother died when they were young and their father lost his fortune in the Panic of 1837.  Reduced family circumstances forced them to leave their New York City mansion for an old Revolutionary War-era farmhouse, both women began writing novels.  In addition, they began holding Bible studies for the cadets at the US Military Academy.  On Sunday after-noon, the West Point students rowed over to the island where the sisters had prepared lemonade and ginger cookies for their guests.  At the close of their time together, the frail women would offer a tender hug to each of these physically conditioned young men – knowing someday they might lose their life in battle.  After Susan died, in 1885, the Sunday classes became Anna’s “one thought in life.”  She continued teaching until her death in 1915 and that year’s graduates included Dwight D. Eisenhower – one of her pupils.  The sisters are buried in the cemetery at West Point, the only civilian women who earned this signal honor as Bible teachers to generations of cadets and their former home has become a museum on the grounds of the Academy.

Life is precious; may we hold it dear to us.  For it is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away (James 4:14).  Thus, while we have today, may we endeavor, as God’s elect, to put on bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness and longsuffering toward our fellowman (Col. 3:12).

¹David Seamands, “Perfectionism: Fraught with Fruits of Destruction,” in

            Christianity Today, April 10, 1981, pp.24-25.

²Aaron Erhardt, Grace, Louisville, KY: Erhardt Publications, 2015, pp. 46-

            47.

Forgive and Be Forgiven

By Mike Cox

When someone has said or done something to hurt you, are you quick to forgive? Does forgiveness ever occur or is revenge the preference? “Someone did wrong to me and I want to see them suffer.”  A synonym for someone “wronging” us is the word trespass. Maybe someone is in debt to us but there is no end in sight for the debt to be paid. Matthew 18:21-35 describes two servants. One servant begs their master for forgiveness of his debt and the master has compassion on him and forgives the debt. However, this servant turns around and doesn’t have compassion on his servant. When the master of the first servant heard what had been done, he was angered and delivered his servant to the torturers (v. 34).

There are things that link all humans together - make us similar. The one thing that links everyone is the fact that they have sinned against God (Romans 3:23). While the debtors mentioned had a financial debt, all humans have a figurative debt to God for the sins they’ve committed. This is when everyone needs the compassion of God to wipe our debts clean. When we are baptized, our debt is wiped clean - our sins are forgiven.  If someone has done wrong towards us we are to forgive them; we are to show mercy. If we don’t, how can we expect to be forgiven our debt? Verse 35 says, “So, My Heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you from his heart does not forgive his brother his trespasses”. Matthew 18:21-22 tells us that we should forgive someone up to “seventy times seven”. The point of this isn’t a quantified number of times to forgive someone, but to constantly forgive.

Everyone needs to forgive and everyone has need to be forgiven. Jesus died on the cross to wipe our sins away. Even so, after we come to the Lord we are to ask forgiveness of our sins. If we ask and strive to do God’s will, we will be forgiven. Nonetheless if we refuse to forgive someone, the Lord knows.